


With Time to Spare

by InHisImage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coping, Dean Winchester in Hell, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27382213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InHisImage/pseuds/InHisImage
Summary: Dean gets to keep his silver medal for endurance. But truth of the matter is, thirty years is a lot more time than the Grand Inquisitor could have ever needed.
Relationships: Alastair/Dean Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 26





	With Time to Spare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frumious_bandersnatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frumious_bandersnatch/gifts).



> So I had every intention to write something filthy and depraved but then ended up with a new Alastair/Dean headcanon? Also, angst and torture and a tiny tiny bit of a messed-up established dynamic because that shit just runs in my blood. Hope this ends up enjoyable to read because I sure as hell enjoyed writing it and keep thinking maybe filthy and depraved can actually manifest in a second chapter if I ever get the inspiration. 
> 
> Happy birthday, buddy!

Twenty-nine years and counting. Dean Winchester won't break. Which is very admirable really except he's not supposed to break yet. Not when there's a schedule and his absence topside (and what that absence triggers) is intentional and Heaven is on board with the timeline. No one is raising Dean from perdition until he breaks, first. No one is breaking Dean until Sam breaks, first. It's a beehive and a chessboard and a domino effect and everyone is doing what everyone is meant to do. The apocalypse, though no one up- or downstairs would call it as such, is their one common goal, after all.

Now Michael knows this. Lucifer, in his cage, knows this. Lilith knows this. Alastair knows this. Dean doesn't.

Dean thinks he's been keeping on keeping on. His arrogance, his fight, his "no," are a joke he's not in on. Alastair still pretends to fail at his own game, bides his time bonding and probing.

Takes it easy. Holds back. Doesn't give him more than he can handle. Not yet.

"How many?"

Dean hangs boneless and his thigh muscle twitches. His entire weight suspended by his wrists and his knees bending beneath him. There's a vertical gashing tear from collar bones to right above his abdomen. It's an opening, a gate, layers of skin stripped off and folded and pinned on each side to reveal his sternum. It's a work in progress.

He means the pins. Dean was made to count. But he's too dizzy now and Alastair needs to keep him talking.

"Sixteen."

"Distributed equally?"

"No," Dean doesn't look down, his voice is hoarse and he can't stop blinking, "Nine on the left, uh, seven- seven on the right."

"The asymmetry still bothers me. Whose fault was that?"

"Mine."

"Will you stay still for the next part? I'd rather not mess it up too."

Dean considers arguing his case, that his achilles tendons are still torn and he hasn't been able to stand, let alone stay still throughout, for days. That whatever the "next part" comprises, he has every intention to not mess it up, but no ability to actually oblige.

He doesn't.

It helps to know that nothing he can say can change anything. It helps to think of the torture as this endless stream of existence that he can't avoid or escape. Because Dean knows how to escape it, how to avoid it, and he'd rather that option be removed, that "yes" be nullified.

Giving in is not an option. Neither is negotiating with terrorists.

He tries to stand up anyway. Plants the soles of his feet on concrete floors and pulls on the chains holding up his wrists and he grits his teeth and he weeps.

It's okay. He can cry. He allows himself that.

Alastair watches him like a hawk. Always looks like he's waiting for something. Dean has begged to his heart's content before. So it's not that.

"There you go. Perfect."

He gets a supportive pat on the cheek that doesn't make him wince anymore.

And then Alastair is picking up a hammer and a small box of screws and Dean knows exactly where they're gonna go.

He steels himself, hopes his bones won't fail him.

The sternum is only a fraction of an inch thick. Dean wonders idly if it'll crack by the third screw, prays that would end the session then, and not just change the course.

It doesn't.

The screws are short and thin and they're hammered in with beautiful precision. Slowly, slowly, so nothing fractures beneath.

"One."

Dean screams and the chains rattle. Digging into bones has this sickly lingering sharpness to it that makes his head swim, like scratching on a chalkboard except his very soul is cringing in on itself. For some reason he can't stop staring down at his open chest. Thinks he should look away, should go to his happy place. Isn't sure he has any, anymore.

"Two-uhhnno, no."

Next to the first and a little lower. Alastair likes patterns and likes it more so when they're noticed. It's why thrashing too much is so unforgivable. Nothing sours his mood like a straight line going awry. But the pain is knocking the air out of Dean's lungs and he's starting to hyperventilate right fucking now and it's already earning him a displeased "tsk."

"Three god, god, fuck, please, please-"

It went below the first. If Alastair is going to zigzag them across his sternum, he thinks it can fit up to ten.

Dean is straining desperately and he's going to dislocate his wrists too and that would leave his weight entirely on his ankles and those won't hold him much longer anyway and if he's going to dangle there with no support whatsoever, Alastair won't have support for his drawing board either and if that next screw is not perfectly spaced and if it's the slightest bit out of alignment, if it's not parallel, if it's not _artistic_...

"Please put me on the rack, please strap me down. Please, can't, please, ple-"

Dean doesn't ugly-cry like a child often. Only when he really, really doesn't want to mess up and knows he's right about to.

Alastair drags a fingernail over bare bone and taps twice, "You know how I feel about interruptions, Dean."

Better not dislocate his wrists then.

Oh but he does by the fifth. And by the sixth, breathing is its own cycle of agony and his lungs can't seem to expand far enough for the air he can't seem to get enough of without driving another shrill discordant wail out of him and it's another heave of his chest that feels like blunt trauma to already damaged bones and so he screams, again, and he needs air, more, and so he chokes, and coughs, and screams, can't catch enough air to beg.

And by the seventh he's kicking and screeching like a madman with a noose around his neck and he's already given up on trying because his ankles are ruined and gravity is pulling him down and the chains are pulling him up and he can't stop swaying in between.

"Nnn-no more-"

"Just three more."

Dean is convulsing too violently and it's an inconvenience. Alastair hums and regards him with clinical deliberation, makes the apt decision to position himself right behind him to minimize the frantic involuntary wiggling and offer a measure of backbone support. He reaches around his middle with hammer and screw and he's not breathing down Dean's neck so much as forcing his whobbling head out of the way so he can see.

Just three more. Alastair sculptures on. And Dean writhes against him and howls his throat raw. His eight and nine and ten are strangled rasped out noises he wouldn't have had the mental capacity to summon if enumerating his afflictions hasn't already become second nature.

And then here's the kicker. Dean has developed a critical eye for the level of quality his body is expected to provide. Has been taught to catalogue his suffering and review it. And this... well, this won't do.

There's a crack in the middle of the bone and it's not one-hundred percent his fault but he probably shouldn't have breathed too hard. And five and nine can't seem to align and it's not just Dean's distorted blurry vision as much as he's hoping beyond hope it fucking is.

Alastair examines the end-product and he's not particularly happy. Dean loathes nothing more than curled dissatisfied lips and ending the day with a discarded draft.

"Just- please, please just let me rest for ten minutes."

"And then?"

"And then the screwdriver. Hh- start over tomorrow, I'm so sorry."

Alastair lays the hammer aside and nods.

Dean knows all the right answers by now. Knows the right answers to keep this civil. Knows if he's going to act like a caveman he's going to be treated like a caveman. And come hell or high water he'd rather be a painting than some other demon's blow-up doll and _no, no, not that_...

Alastair knows it too. Won't touch him between the legs or spread him open and bury his cock where it shouldn't fit. Dean doesn't need to be fucked into submission; just needs to choose to behave. It's a lovely arrangement.

Other demons aren't so nice.

Alastair respects him enough to at least keep that relatively preventable. Dean likes to dedicate his breaks to counting his blessings.

"What's your answer, Dean?"

He's just unscrewed the last screw and Dean can't remember if he counted down from ten or if it's all a delirious nightmare and he's going to somehow wake up in a motel room with Sammy still snoring on the other bed.

Sometimes it feels like yesterday.

But the righteous man knows all the right answers, still.

"No."

"No, not yet. Good boy."


End file.
